In the early days of the legendary server’s Moria era — you know, last month — I had a moment of inspiration where I was going to finally throw off the shackles of the cumbersome legendary item system and, you know, just not use it. Like, at all. No LIs, just normal gear much the same way we’d been playing in the first four months. It was a liberating thought, and one that I stuck to… for about a day.

While this had the great appeal of simply not having to mess with the LI grind and fiddly bits, all too quickly I realized that I’d be gimping myself terribly, starting with the absence of one entire gear slot that is only used by LIs (and later the mount one as well). And that’s not even to consider all of the skill modifiers that I’d sorely need now that my poor Minstrel has been nerfed of her “OP” status. So… crud, I guess I’m using LIs.

Since we’re wading about at level 60 these days, the endgame for this particular stage in our journey is of more importance than it would be if someone on a regular server was simply blowing through Moria and beyond. And that means that we’re all chasing First Age LIs, which will at least give us a good start on Mirkwood. I wouldn’t be even doing that except that obtaining one didn’t seem that far out of reach — just six days of running the quick Turtle raid. Which, oddly enough, I had never ever done in my LOTRO history. Since our kinship was doing this every night, that was perfect for my comfort level.

Aside from that and lazy Lothlorien questing (which doesn’t need to be done, but I have little else to do right now), I jumped back into the Yule Festival last week, which was enjoying an April encore. I was down for that, since there were a couple of cosmetics that I had missed, such as the owl mask (which is truly one of my favorites that the artists have designed).

And boy do I have the entire Winter-home run down flat. That’s probably what I like about this festival the most, that I can do a full run of 10 quests for the daily without having to hop zones or jump through any difficult hoops. Lots of quest stacking here and on a good day I can get it all done in about 20 minutes.

Next up? 12th anniversary, baby! We’ll see how difficult this’ll be for a character that can’t progress past Moria, but I anticipate plenty of scavenger hunt fun over the next month — and some much-needed cosmetics and other goodies for this character! Plus, I’ll get to log back on to my Lore-master to do the latest hunt and make sure she’s up to date on that.